This is not an article about the 2nd Amendment. This is not
an article about gun control. This is an article about what we've lost
track of because we've lost our perspective.
I’ve grown tired of positional arguments about guns. I
understand the emotional passions that surround them but I do not agree that
satisfying those emotions has much bearing or merit on what’s right for making
sound public policy when it comes to how firearms figure into managing public
safety and crime deterrence in the United States.
At the core of the animus laden political debate about guns is how
they affect crime deterrence in metropolitan America. Yes there a hunters
who live in metropolitan American. They drive hours out of their way to
target practice and hunt. Outside of a firing range with a backstop built
to withstand the pummeling of ammunition hitting at well over 1,500 foot-pounds
of force, most pistol bullets have one-third that energy level, one does not
discharge a high powered rifle within the city limits nor stalk deer browsing
on the decorative plantings on your lawn, if you have a lawn. Nope, the
primary purpose of firearms in the metropolitan America is as a tool to deter,
dissuade or thwart criminals on the one hand, and as a tool to commit crimes on
the other. Guns, being intimate objects don’t care on which side of the
equation they are used. Humans, being sentient beings, do care and do
bear responsibilities to understand how these tools are part of their
environment they live in regardless of whether they like them or not.
So once again, I step back and start to ask questions. What
factors should a police chief, a sheriff, a mayor, a city council member, a
county supervisor, a state assembly person, a state senator, an attorney
general, a governor, a U.S. Representative or a U.S. Senator really be taking
into account when contemplating public policy about the cost-benefit economics
of the role of firearms in metropolitan public safety? What level of
competence in looking at the issue objectively should the voting public expect
and demand these officials demonstrate and explain cogently to them?
Certainly the people don't want civic leader that are bought and paid for drones
of lobbyists whose agendas pivot on dividing communities into favored and
despised camps. No, that's not the kind of answer that's in the national
interest.
The next logical question then becomes do public officials have
any clue as to what the matrix of guns in in their area and how they fit into
the crime deterrence equations really works in their respective jurisdictions?
Probably not. Crime analysts certainly know that 98% to 99% of
law enforcement in the United States happens because of voluntary compliance by
people who view the laws they follow as reasonable. Crime analysts also
know that of a the small fraction of a population that does no obey the law
only a tiny fraction of these, 1% to3%, demonstrate a dangerous propensity to violence
that may necessitate the threat of lethal force to dissuade them or the use of
lethal force to interdict them. And don’t kid yourself with placebos and
substitutes, the best technology we have at this time to do that at the moment
a threat emerges is a gun. Crime analysts also know that as metropolitan
population density increases and we pack more people into the same square mile
of living space, the probability of encountering someone with violent intent
increases. You can measure this stuff. You can test it against
crime statistics databases. It bears out as what math people call highly
correlated indicators; meaning, it’s probably true.
What public officials understand even less is what the actual
firearms equipped resources within a community to deter, dissuade or interdict
violent crime are. In today's superficial America, governing objectivity
has become obscured by the political dialog of lightning rod terms like
“cold dead hands” or “ammosexuals” – we’ve all suffered the barrage of memes,
tweets and anonymous comments that are the “gift(?)” of the Internet.
Getting back to reality, public
officials know about some of the crime fighting resources. For
others, they are quite frankly oblivious to them. This is not good.
What happens because of this imperfect assessment is that public policy –
like most imperfect things – then over relies on what it knows and fails to use
what is doesn’t see.
So that begs the question, “What specific items should public
officials see as being part of their real hand of cards to play to manage
public safety? Having convinced myself that I was not satisfied with the
status quo; naturally, I made a list.
The top of the list is of course the police force. More
specifically, the portion of the police force that is out on the street
patrolling and looking for crime to stop. When you look into it further,
you find that only about one-third of the total number of sworn officers are on
duty at a given time, an artifact of the job being a 24/7 shift work process. Of
the ones on duty, less than half are “in the field” doing things like patrol
and traffic enforcement; the number of effective units gets cut even more if
patrol deploys a fraction of their units in what are called Adam or 2-person
units; a single officer car is called a Lincoln, as in lone officer, unit.
And that’s for police departments. The fraction gets cut further
for a sheriff’s department where portions of the staff are assigned to jail or
court duties; it can be about half of the daily workload of a sheriff’s office.
There’s a reason it’s called a thin blue line.
That’s about where political analytics about armed intervention in
crime management ends most of the time.
In my own surveys of U.S. cities, the purest model for reliance of
a police force for public security is the City of New York where 34,000+ sworn
officers protect and serve – some would belabor that description – a population
of 8 million occupying 304 square miles. This is the densest major
metropolitan police per capita concentration in America.
In contrast, the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago have police
forces one-third that size. The latter two are more in line with the
force to population ratios found in municipalities in most of America. This
sizing equation may be cultural but is more likely an economically supportable
capacity limit for most of urban America.
The New York exception case has always fascinated me because it’s
also a city where the use of a firearm by almost anyone else to defend against
violent crime is likely to cause more legal trouble for the defender than the
perpetrator. Many a borough resident I’ve met marvels at the thought that
it’s legal for most of America to even touch a handgun without getting arrested
west of the Hudson River. Their fascination about firearms is exceeded only by
the Japanese I’ve met that visit California ranges by the tour bus load for the
novelty chance to touch and fire a gun. In New York, gun permits are few
and far between. They are the province of the connected; those elite
enough to be worthy. It’s very much an all-in faith in government crime
management strategy.
Being as student of global stability, I've also studied how hard
it is to change human behavior patterns that are shaped by past catastrophes – a
sort of cultural PTSD if you will. This aspect of regional behavior is
crucial to understanding the interaction of warring parties in other parts of
the world, I’ve often wondered if New York policing has evolved similarly.
In this case, I look back to how the British garrisoned New York during
the Revolutionary War. As the war turned into a siege, the British piled
soldiers into the city carrying on a 18th century version of "stop and
frisk" effectively turning the garrison into a open prison to quell
dissent. At the time, troops took their liberties with the populace; a
form of terror meant to reinforce control. The occupiers also handed out
favors; another form of power reinforcing control that goes back to ancient
times. In the end, the King’s forces withdrew. But this model of
governance in force seems to echo on. To be fair, the approach does work
and the City of New York is a far safer place today than in was in the 1990’s
when they brilliantly papered over the city’s problems with bumper stickers and
commercials designed to instill more cultural pride. But a legion of
officers is a costly 1% policing solution. Economically, too costly for
99% of the rest of America that shares neither the history living under an
all-in governance model, and in fact is mostly repelled by such notions, nor
the ability to spend up for such a model.
It used to be hard to argue that there were viable alternatives to
the New York model. What you mostly found were cities where the economics
of big policing did not work lamenting that their departments were woefully too
small. And then of course, they were hit with the reality that there are
competing municipal priorities like keeping pot holes filled, power, water and
sewage systems running, and business, building and zoning permits managed.
One is quickly reminded that there is no free lunch in America, even if
you are the government.
Then alternative models began to emerge. First in the form
of the “Every Home has a Gun” press coverage phenomenon legislated by a
municipality called Kennesaw in Georgia. Don’t get too hot under the
collar about that one if you don’t like guns; just remember that even without
such "encouragement" laws, 34% of U.S. households have at least one
firearm in them. Google it or ask Siri if you don't believe me.
Then came the “Stand Your Ground” movement emphasizing
self-defense outside the home. This movement’s been around enough now to
collect information to show that it does have deterrent, dissuasion and
interdiction properties and violent crime generally does decrease in
metropolitan zones where it is implemented. Don’t whine about it.
Learn to use the internet like your children do and use it to read up on
the FBI crime statistics. See for yourself there’s a growing body of
evidence to demonstrate a negative correlation effect; that means more CCW’s
results in lower violent crime rates.
So much for the political footballs. There's more.
All along, and strangely ignored by government planners, there
were also contributions by armed security guard forces. These are
organized in both limited scope uncoordinated law enforcement resources like campus
police, metro police, et al. There are also separately licensed and
certified paid armed security guards used for things from commercial building
protection to guarding armored cars.
Finally, for some reasons not on anyone's radar are owner defended
businesses. Things like shopkeepers (fixed point defenses) and cab
drivers (mobile location defenses) keeping guns tucked away but ready to use.
If you scour media reports, it turns out they do a fair share of the real
world encounters entering into armed combat with criminals.
That’s a lot more guns in circulation for defense in metropolitan
America than simplistic low information propaganda will tell you. From a
public safety policy management perspective, this totality of arms kept and
borne in circulation in a metropolitan community is not something to ignore
selectively, it’s something to measure in totality and leverage upon.
Objectively, it’s important that public policy planners look at
these components of the so-called “good guys” equation without tainting their
analysis by dismissing what may be some of the most cost effective means to
increase both the perception and reality of crime deterrence by the use of
credible countermeasures in their communities.
No silly dilly, “kumbaya” is not a credible deterrent to that
minuscule slice of miscreants in our midst who are already prohibited class
individuals in illegal possession of a firearm with violent intent that know
“their money” is in your purse or home that are on the prowl to see if you are
today’s easy mark. Statistically, you will come within 100 feet of at
least one of them once each day every day in a metropolitan area. Wake up
and smell some coffee. Get your nose out of that cell phone and pivot
your head around and be aware of your surroundings so they pick someone else to
accost; that’s the deter and dissuade part of self-defense. Use it.
So how to leverage the totality of a community? Is there a way to quantify the net effect of
all these armed force elements into come cohesive picture Is there a tool
public officials can use to bring together the data and see what the numbers
say? I believe there is and I’m building one. Like I once built a
model to expose which small banks were safe and sound to make the banking
financial crisis more transparent for ordinary Americans – you may remember it
as “Move Your Money” – I’m building another model that does what strategic
analysts call a “net assessment” – bringing all the known and previously
ignored factors together into an overall measurement.
From there, maybe real “common sense” can emerge. Stay
tuned.
